Many modern transmission products, such as SONET fiber optic transmission systems, are required to have variants in order to operate at different clock rates. Development of these products becomes unnecessarily complicated and time consuming because one set of components is required for one clock rate and another set of components is required for another clock rate. Upgrading the transmission system or changing the clock rate requires disposal and replacement of a large number of components, significantly increasing the cost and design cycle time of the system. Further, changes in system clock rates cannot be performed remotely, requiring the system to suffer down time in order to affect the changes. Therefore, it is desirable to have a transmission system that can perform in response to changes in clock rates without adversely affecting performance and development.